Dollar amount you want to spend?
Are you building it or want it prebuilt?
Do you need a monitor or keyboard and mouse?

My budget is $4,500. Not necessarily what I want to spend if I don't have to, but I will because it'd be a worthy investment seeing how much time I spend on the computer, and that I'll be needing it for school and work (slowly but steadily working for a web based design degree, and may want to do some graphic work too...when I'm not being a keyboard jockey for Drew anyway).

I want to build it. I know that requires an amount of working knowledge, but if I'm as smart as I like to think I am, I like to think I could put in the study time to learn. I think building it will be more beneficial in the long run as well.

My budget is $4,500. Not necessarily what I want to spend if I don't have to, but I will because it'd be a worthy investment seeing how much time I spend on the computer, and that I'll be needing it for school and work (slowly but steadily working for a web based design degree, and may want to do some graphic work too...when I'm not being a keyboard jockey for Drew anyway).

I want to build it. I know that requires an amount of working knowledge, but if I'm as smart as I like to think I am, I like to think I could put in the study time to learn. I think building it will be more beneficial in the long run as well.

-You definitely do not have to spend $4500 to get a really good gaming / graphic design PC. You can get by on a lot less than that, especially if you find some really good deals and some rebates.

-I'd suggest a dual monitor setup almost from the get go for what you're planning on doing with it. And I don't know if you have a nice tablet or not, but if not I'd factor that into the cost as well. You can get a decent desk for cheaptown, so you can skimp there if you want.

-A LOT of us are super knowledgeable about building PCs, and there are about a billion websites you can read up on to teach yourself. It really isn't very difficult, but you want a basic understanding before you start ANY build.

-I'd definitely suggest building your own than just buying a pre-built one. I know a lot of people that went that route (like alienware or cyberpower) and have had nothing but problems.

I'm actually about to start putting some cash away for an upgrade late this year. I'm not doing **** until Unreal 4 is out and has legit games running on its engine - if you already have a decent box, you shouldn't either. None of the reviewers have benchmarks for the new technology. If you drop a ton of dough on a box for gaming, you're throwing money out the window.

If you absolutely need a new box right now, do a ton of research. Buy something moderate or something that has room to grow into the new technology. This is a rough time to be looking for a new system for gaming.

Just a hint on the cases that often gets left out because they are a pretty personal thing for the most part... but look for one that has all the front ports that you want/need.

I screwed up on my latest build with the case and got one that only had 2 front USB ports (previous case had 6) and it can be a pain when you really need 3 or 4 these days if you are running your phone, external HDD, ear phones and all that jazz through it, basically everything charges from USB so just a heads up.

Obviously it's not a deal breaker or a reason not to do something but is worth noting when picking a case. I'd recommend buying a big case in general for two reasons... First it makes expansion a lot easier but more importantly, it's your first build and having a bit of extra room in there makes everything so much easier to do and you don't want to have a nightmare trying to squeeze everything in on your first build if you can avoid it.

Have fun with it though, as everyone has said, it's a very simple process but it's a great idea to read up on it before attempting and have your head around it rather than jumping straight in and following a guide, so read a couple of guides, they'll all give you a useful hint or two.

Also... if you have big clumsy hands or anything like that, I'd recommend one of those $10 computer tool kits that come with some really handy little tools for building, realistically it can all be done with a couple of screwdrivers but having those extra tools can save a fair bit of frustration and time. I particularly love the little claw things for getting screws into tight places.

My budget is $4,500. Not necessarily what I want to spend if I don't have to, but I will because it'd be a worthy investment seeing how much time I spend on the computer, and that I'll be needing it for school and work (slowly but steadily working for a web based design degree, and may want to do some graphic work too...when I'm not being a keyboard jockey for Drew anyway).

I want to build it. I know that requires an amount of working knowledge, but if I'm as smart as I like to think I am, I like to think I could put in the study time to learn. I think building it will be more beneficial in the long run as well.

Right now, I don't even have a desk, so I'll be needing both.

I've been in the same boat as you TH so my advice > everyone else :D jk

I've built a few and most recently last year I built my latest rig and I built it for gaming and design.

I went with one 27 inch led monitor for more room to edit and design. Two screens would be good also like Vidae said. I'm eventually going to run 2 27 inch screens for designing purpose.

And like Damix said go ahead and go with the Ivy Bridge processor, you will benefit from it for you editing purposes more detail and also your games will run really smooth.

SSD I highly recommend; install your programs and OS on there and it will run so fast. Rendering images and videos with your programs installed on your ssd it runs amazing. The comparison from designing on this computer and a computer on campus is pretty noticeable in terms of speed.

Invest in a more expensive motherboard if a bad mobo goes down it can take your ram, processor, or anything with it and fry it.

I also went a CPU-water cooler because the fan that comes with the process is crap. I tossed it and went with this

When you're running adobe programs or gaming a lot the processor will be put to work and this water cooler keeps my processor really cool while under a lot of stress. Really easy to set up just youtube it, highly recommend picking this one up.

Keeping your rig at a good temp will prolong your computer and easier to maintain so that's probably the main thing to keep in mind when building your rig; extra fans and setting up your fans to blow in a certain direction.

Mine is set up to my front fan will pull in the cool air into the mobo and also my sit fan will pull in more air and my top 2 fans pulls air out of the case keeping the air flow in the same direction. Random fans that are put in it will cause the air to flow in every which direction, hot air just pushed around etc.

And yes Microcenter is awesome if you have one by you go there. They have an awesome deal that if you buy your processor from them they give you any choice of motherboard for a pretty nice discount for a combo package.

Vidae is right, it's better to just skip it for a first time builder. In general, it won't really hurt you at all either to have an air cooled PC. The only real difference is if you don't get a good case/fans it can be loud. However, my PC is very quiet.

I don't even think it's possible to get up to $4,500 for a PC. lol. But I'm more about getting bang for my buck and finding the point at which spending more money starts to have less and less of an effect on the quality of my product. I tend to set aside $800 when I go to make a major upgrade and that's usually the sweet spot (usually doesn't include HDD, PSU, or case).

There is such a thing as too big with monitors. I don't like anything bigger than 23/24". Even then, it can make some games (RTS) a bit of a chore. I run dual screens and could never operate any other way. My second monitor is a 17" Samsung that I've had for 10 years. This thing simply will not die (or even fade in quality). Get a Samsung monitor. I wouldn't even look at other brands.

For cases...my only advice there is to make sure you get one that's easy to work in. I'd check Tom's Hardware to find out what brands are putting out quality cases these days and go from there.

If you're dropping a hefty sum on it, you might as well go water cooling. It keeps things cooler and keeps noise down. But it is a pain in the ass. If you want to skip it for now, I'd recommend a Zalman CPU cooler. I run Zalman coolers on my GPU and CPU. Keeps the temp way down. Make sure you get a good thermal paste and read the **** out of how to apply thermal paste. It's not complicated, but you'll isnta-fry your CPU if you screw it up.

Definitely SSD for at least the OS.

It's harder to run into ****** PSU's these days, but always remember this general rule: heavier is better. Lightweight PSU means it's crap and will either fail, not give you what you need out of it, or the latter until the former happens. Don't buy a ****** PSU.

As I said, though. if you can hold off on doing this until Unreal 4 games are out and we have real benchmark tests for the new tech, that'd be the best thing to do. Otherwise, build cautiously and have upgrading in the near future in mind for parts like the GPU.

Vidae is right, it's better to just skip it for a first time builder. In general, it won't really hurt you at all either to have an air cooled PC. The only real difference is if you don't get a good case/fans it can be loud. However, my PC is very quiet.

The case and fan placement is a must in any build, yeah. Mine is whisper quiet and it's almost always on. About once or twice a year I'll go through it with some canned air and get some dust out, but I've never had a problem.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Caddy

Building a computer intimidates the crap out of me.

It used to intimidate me too, until I decided f it and just started tinkering with some stuff. I had a buddy of mine build one of my older PCs and I took apart the oldest ones and just messing with all of it. Seeing how stuff was plugged in, seeing how certain things could be moved around based on a motherboard, stuff like that. It was a lot of fun and it helped teach me a lot the inner workings for when I did my next build.

It's an interesting way to spend some time though. And yes, I'm a nerd.